Ian Bunn | Political & Popular Culture Arts

David Rolfe Graeber the 52 year old American anthropologist, anarchist, and involved in social and political activism. Graeber has been featured in an article by John Kampfner in the Japan Times titled ‘The story of the Occupy movements by one of the leaders’. Kampfner states “I’m torn. I can’t work out whether the Occupy movements were responsible for their own demise; and I can’t work out whether I’ve had enough of reading tomes about the brave new world of revolutionary consensus-building. The case for the defense of the spirit of 2011 should be overwhelming. Groups of activists around the world came together, determinedly but also nonviolently, not just to protest at the criminality of the banks and their backers, but also to put into practice another way. So why did it dissipate? David Graeber was a leading light in the Occupy Wall Street movement. An activist, anarchist and anthropologist (note his useful alliteration), he writes vividly about his experiences. He captures the joys and fears of a movement that believed it was on the cusp of achieving something special. Beyond the default complaints of police brutality and media narrow-mindedness, he struggles, however, to explain why in the end so little was achieved. His observations engender rage and smiles in equal measure. The tie that bound the activists in Zuccotti Park, night after night, was pizza. Local delivery firms thrived, as people from far and wide phoned in orders for pizza to go directly to the camp. …Graeber’s unwillingness to set out credible economic and political alternatives is curious. He confines his analysis to process, arguing that many problems would be solved if the manner of political engagement changed. He goes to great length to explain how democracy by consensus or collective problem-solving works, describing this as “something vaguely like jury duty, except noncompulsory, with some way of screening obsessives, cranks and hollow-earthers, but nonetheless allowing an equal chance of participation in great decisions to all who actually do wish to participate.”

Inspired by John Kampfner, The Japan Times ow.ly/laSvB Image source David Graeber ow.ly/laSlg

Anne Marie Waters the British journalist activist for secularism, public ownership, civil liberties, and the power of the people to hold the state to account has published an article at the National Secular Society titled ‘Sharia Law and Free Speech’ in which she states “…There exists in Britain a network of sharia family ‘courts’. They are the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal and the Islamic Sharia Council. The former operates under the powers of the Arbitration Act, and the latter is a registered charity. They both operate a system of family law which is expanding and has created a parallel legal system on family matters for Muslims. It is taking us to an increasingly divided and fractured society where application of the law is subjective and based on personal belief. The men who run these bodies are real charmers – they believe men should be able to rape and beat their wives. They believe a woman’s word is worth only half of a man’s, and they believe children are the property of their fathers… Some women are beginning to speak out against these ‘courts’ and the stories they tell are more and more disturbing. Women are being seriously abused here and we have to say so – while we’re still allowed. …Talking about the sharia system in Britain is not an easy thing to do, but the brilliant Atheist, Secularist and Humanist (ASH) societies keep marching on regardless. …For the record, I have nothing against Islam per se. I would never ever object to or try to prevent Muslims practicing their religion. But when any practice is an abuse of human rights, it must be opposed by those of us who believe in human rights. I’m not against sharia family law because it’s got anything to do with Islam, I’m against it because it abuses human beings, especially women…. and I insist upon my right to say so.”

Inspired by Anne Marie Waters, National Secular Society ow.ly/jBd4h Image source Twitter ow.ly/jBd3S

Zillah Eisenstein the American political theorist, activist and Professor of Politics having written books that have tracked the rise of neoliberalism both within the U.S. and across the globe. Eisenstein has published an article on Aljazeera titled ‘Female militarism: Band of sisters?’ claiming that fighting on the front lines of a war zone doesn’t exactly reflect feminist ideals or progress towards gender equality. Eisenstein states “…US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta has lifted the military’s official ban on women in combat. This overrides a 1994 Pentagon ruling that excluded women from artillery, armour, infantry and other combat. …I wonder who really wants to serve in combat? Who wants to fight wars in the first place? Who wants to be on the front lines and kill other human beings – or better yet, get killed themselves? …Not all, but many who “choose” to enlist have few other alternatives. Many are in the US military today because of a lack of alternatives in a shrinking job market. …The pay is about equal between Wal-Mart and the military, although the latter job can get you killed. I do not think that many enlisted women are any more pro-war than I am. It is a job, albeit a dangerous one. The rest of us are just lucky enough to have other options. …My point is that the global economy and its shrinking labour market, everywhere, is growing more militarist and more female at the same time. And, it is really important to not confuse the presence of females, especially in combat, with gender “equality”. …There is less and less equality for everyone, men and women alike. Equal to what and to whom and for what? I am thinking about that 99 percent. US military women are still part of the 99 percent, unequal even if now with full citizen rights.”

Inspired by Zillah Eisenstein, Aljazeera ow.ly/hfL1N Image source Facebook ow.ly/hfKZS

Lucy Lippard the 75 year old American internationally known writer, art critic, activist and curator among the first writers to recognize the “dematerialization” at work in conceptual art and was an early champion of feminist art has been featured by Chloe Wyma in an article for Blouin Artinfo titled ‘Four Decades After Lucy Lippard’s “Six Years,” Is Conceptual Art Still Relevant? Wyma states “If you want to understand the stakes of the “dematerialization of the art object,” look no further than the late British artist John Latham’s “Art and Culture,” the entrance piece at “Materializing Six Years: Lucy Lippard and the Emergence of Conceptual Art” at the Brooklyn Museum. The piece mockingly takes its title from mid-century formalist art critic Clement Greenberg’s influential text: An open briefcase reveals a copy of Greenberg’s book, an overdue notice from the library, and vials containing the masticated pulp of its pages. The byproduct of a party where Latham invited guests to chew the pages of Greenberg’s book, the work takes the radical propositions of dematerialization quite literally, turning the bible of formalist art criticism into formless cud. Casting off the cloth of the detached, Greenbergian art critic, Lucy Lippard played a crucial role, not only as a writer, but as curator and collaborator within the diverse artistic activity that’s now catalogued under the rubric of Conceptual Art. As she writes in the forward to the exhibition, Lippard and her circle “invented ways for art to act as an invisible frame for seeing and thinking rather than as an object of delectation or connoisseurship.” In their critique of the art object, they sought to remake the art world as a network of ideas to be shared, rather than a marketplace of objects to be bought and sold.”

Inspired by Chloe Wyma, Blouin Artinfo ow.ly/gGWLj Image source Fluxusa ow.ly/gGWJS

Javier Sicilia the 56 year old Mexican poet, journalist and activist who launched a grassroots movement with aims to end the ‘War on Drugs’ after his 24 year old son was murdered by a drug cartel, has been interviewed by Connor Guy and Umar Farooq for The Nation magazine. Sicilia states “Cartels have a lot of bosses. We are talking now about fifteen cartels [in Mexico].  And they have multiplied since President Calderón’s [2006 military] strategy to make war on them. …A path to peace is to change the national security law to a human law for peace. And the allowance of regulated drug use, because its not a national security issue, it’s a public health issue, and attacking drug abuse is causing a tremendous harm to the country. …The US has forbidden drug use, which should be a public health issue. And then they set up for us this war. Over $2 billion have been invested in this war [on drugs]—mostly for guns, for weapons and military intelligence. …if we can get support from the media, we would be able to put this on the politicians’ agendas, because it’s a problem in the US and Mexico. It’s a bi-national problem. Not only that, it is a continental problem, and if we are really serious, it is a world problem.”

Inspired by The Nation ow.ly/bJ8I6 image source Twitter ow.ly/bJ8Gb

Nobody really defends Israel anymore (May 15th 2012)

Norman Gary Finkelstein the 58 year old USA political scientist, activist and author has been profiled by Natasha Mozgovaya on the Haaretz blog in reference to his latest book that she describes as surprisingly optimistic, despite its title ‘Knowing Too Much: Why the American Jewish Romance with Israel Is Coming to an End’. “In June, Norman Finkelstein will mark 30 years of criticizing Israel. He remembers the exact day – the beginning of the Lebanon war, which ended his indifference to the Middle East’s troubles. …he [says he] is “not going to be an Israel-basher anymore.” It’s not that he’s changed his mind on the conflict, he just says blaming Israel has become too easy. “Nobody really defends Israel anymore” …They’ve lost the battle for public opinion, they claim it’s because American Jews know too little – I claim it’s because they know too much about the conflict, and young liberal Jews have difficulty defending the use of cluster bombs in Lebanon or supporting the Israeli settlements. I was bashing Israel in the past because nobody else was exposing its true record. Many people are doing it now, so I switched hats from a critic of Israel to a diplomat who wants to resolve the conflict. I have not changed, but I think the spectrum has moved.”

Inspired by Natasha Mozgovaya http://ow.ly/aONIu image source Miguel de Icaza http://ow.ly/aOND0

BP spill a toxic “gumbo of chemicals” (May 5th 2012)

Antonia Juhasz a USA oil and energy analyst, author, journalist, and activist has published an article in The Nation Magazine depicting the health issues experienced by residents of the Gulf Coast since the 2010 BP oil spill. In the article Juhasz states, “The most toxic chemicals found in oil are lipid-soluble, which means that they accumulate in organs that contain a lot of fat, like the brain. Consequently, those with the greatest exposure can get permanent brain damage, dementia, as a result… In August 2011 the Government Accountability Project (GAP) began its investigation of the public health threats associated with the oil spill cleanup… Witnesses reported a host of ailments, including eye, nose and throat irritation; respiratory problems; blood in urine, vomit and rectal bleeding; seizures; nausea and violent vomiting episodes that last for hours; skin irritation, burning and lesions; short-term memory loss and confusion; liver and kidney damage; central nervous system effects and nervous system damage; hypertension; and miscarriages. … It will take years to determine the actual number of affected people. The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), with financial support from BP, is conducting several multiyear health impact studies, which are only just getting under way.”

Inspired by The Nation http://ow.ly/awUs6 image source Twitter http://ow.ly/awUHv

“getting money out of politics” his top goal (April 5th 2012)

Michael Francis Moore the 57 year old US filmmaker, social critic and activist has published an article calling out for the occupy movement to take political action from within the political system. Moore states “Here’s what we don’t do: don’t turn Occupy Wall Street into another bureaucratic, top-down organization. That will certainly kill it. Baby boomers who grew up working within traditional organizations need to calm down and not shoehorn this movement into the old paradigm of “Let’s elect people to office and then lobby them to pass good laws!” Let Occupy take its natural course. The candidates for office that we need are in this movement. (Are you one of them? Why not? Someone has to do it, and it would be better if it was you!) The laws that must be enacted to make this a more just nation will come in due time. And not ten years from now; some of this will happen this year. The leading candidate for Congress from my hometown of Flint, Michigan, has already taken a pledge to make “getting money out of politics” his top goal once in office. Others have joined him. We need to vote for them and then hold them to it.”

Inspired by Michael Moore http://ow.ly/9MLc0 image source David Shankbone http://ow.ly/9MM8H

This is against the will of the Almighty (March 31st 2012)

Yisroel Dovid Weiss the 55 year old US Haredi rabbi, activist and spokesman for a branch of Neturei Karta, an anti-Zionist group, has been interviewed on Aljazeera explaining why Zionism and Judaism are not the same, “This is against the will of the Almighty and this is not what it means to be a Jew.” Weiss is renowned for his stance against the legitimacy of the Jewish state and occupation of Palestine. Weiss is quoted as stating, “The Zionists use the Holocaust issue to their benefit. We, Jews who perished in the Holocaust, do not use it to advance our interests. We stress that there are hundreds of thousands Jews around the world who identify with our opposition to the Zionist ideology and who feel that Zionism is not Jewish, but a political agenda…What we want is not a withdrawal to the ’67 borders, but to everything included in it, so the country can go back to the Palestinians and we could live with them…” On the issue of Iran Weiss has stated that Ahmadinejad is not an enemy of the Jews, but is a “God-fearing man [who] respects the Jewish people and he protects them in Iran”.

Inspired by Aljazeera http://ow.ly/9FxJN image source Rense http://ow.ly/9FxT8

Fracking has greenhouse footprint larger than coal (February 11th)

Ellen Cantarow the US peace and climate change activist claims a minor revolution is occurring in the US as anti-fracking develops its own Occupy movement, “a resistance movement that has arisen to challenge some of the most powerful corporations in history”. Cantarow released an article on TomDispatch.com stating “At a time when the International Energy Agency reports that we have five more years of fossil-fuel use at current levels before the planet goes into irreversible climate change, fracking has a greenhouse gas footprint larger than that of coal… Fracking uses prodigious amounts of water laced with sand and a startling menu of poisonous chemicals to blast the methane out of the shale. At hyperbaric bomb-like pressures, this technology propels five to seven million gallons of sand-and-chemical-laced water a mile or so down a well bore into the shale. Up comes the methane – along with about a million gallons of wastewater containing the original fracking chemicals and other substances that were also in the shale, among them radioactive elements and carcinogens. There are 400,000 such wells in the United States.”

Inspired Ellen Cantarow http://ow.ly/8TlDz by image source http://ow.ly/8SzzN

One of the most powerful things of all is aesthetics (December 15th)

Kalle Lasn the 69 year old Estonian Canadian author, activist and co-founder of the anti-consumerist Adbusters magazine has been credited with “branding” the OWS Movement by William Yardley in a New York Times article, “…as uprisings shook the Middle East and much of the world economy struggled, Mr. Lasn … felt the moment was ripe to tap simmering frustration on the American political left. On July 13, he and his colleagues created a new hash tag on Twitter: #OCCUPYWALLSTREET. They made a poster showing a ballerina dancing on the back of the muscular sculptured bull near Wall Street in Manhattan … For Mr. Lasn, they were tools to begin remodeling the “mental environment,” to create a new “meme,” the term coined by the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins for a kind of transcendent cultural message. “There’s a number of ways to wage a meme war … I believe that one of the most powerful things of all is aesthetics.”

Inspired by William Yardley http://ow.ly/7VnB5 image source freerepublic http://ow.ly/7VogT

Free market democracy is in fact an oxymoron (December 4th)

Vandana Shiva the 59 year old Indian philosopher and activist, believes the 99% as represented by the Occupy Movement have nothing to lose but their disposability and dispensability. In an article published by Aljazeera, Shiva states “Freedom in our times has been sold as “free market democracy”. “Free markets” mean freedom for corporations to exploit whom and what they want, where they want, how they want. It means the end of freedom for people and nature everywhere. “Free market democracy” is in fact an oxymoron which has deluded us into believing that deregulation of corporations means freedom for us … The new movements understand this. And that is why they are indignant and are occupying the political and economic spaces to create a living democracy with people and the earth at the centre instead of corporations and greed.”

Inspired by Vandana Shiva http://ow.ly/7A30w image source http://ow.ly/7A3lI

You've been treating us like mushrooms (November 2nd)

Stephen Mayne the 42 year old Australian journalist and shareholder activist, renown for founding Crikey.com.au an online independent news service has lashed out at News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch during the annual shareholders meeting in Los Angeles USA. Mayne, a director at the Australian Shareholders’ Association, former News Corp employee, and longtime shareholder has attended 12 previous annual meetings of News Corp. Other shareholders, including Tom Watson the British Labor politician who led the investigation into the infamous phone tapping scandal also spoke out at the meeting, unsuccessfully calling for Murdoch to relinquish his position to an independent chairman. Murdoch claimed he would get to the bottom of the scandal and establish a procedure to put things right. Mayne’s response was “You’ve been treating us like mushrooms for a long time … You’re still trying to do it.”

Inspired by Amy Chozick http://ow.ly/75YXg image source http://ow.ly/75YUf

The people want the fall of the regime (October 18th)

Moataz Nasr the 50 year old Egyptian cultural artist activist has been prevented from including a key element to his London’s Hanover Square maze by the Westminster City Council. After gaining approval to exhibit his maze installation that has inscribed the words “The People Want The Fall Of The Regime”, he is now prevented from including the inscription on the basis that it was not “suitable at this time”. Nasr has been an activist since he was shot while demonstrating against the government at age 16, actively protested in Tahrir Square during the downfall of the Mubarak regime over its corruption and repression. Nasr responded “I was always looking up to England and Europe as places where I could express myself and live freely without anything to control me, so I am bitterly disappointed”.

Inspired by Coline Milliard http://ow.ly/6TvTz image source thenational http://ow.ly/6Tweg

Tremendous respect for his fearlessness (October 17th)

Desmond Mpilo Tutu the 80 year old South African retired Anglican bishop who became synonymous with the apartheid struggle during the 1980s, has released a new biography marking his 80^th birthday titled ‘Tutu:Authorized’. Tuto rose to worldwide fame as a tireless activist receiving tributes for world leaders for his inspirational activities. A Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Tuto was regarded as a ‘playful’  individual who traveled the world campaigning to end the South African apartheid rule. FW de Klerk the last leader of the apartheid government is quoted as stating, “I developed tremendous respect for his fearlessness. It wasn’t fearlessness of a wild kind. It was fearlessness anchored in his deep faith in God”. South Africa’s first democratic president Nelson Mandela stated, ”If Desmond gets to heaven and  is denied entry, then none of the rest of us will get in!”

Inspired by myweku http://ow.ly/6TwI8 image source Dale Frost http://ow.ly/6Tx5I

Birgitta Jónsdóttir the 43 year old artist activist and member of the Icelandic parliament, campaigning for democratic reform beyond party politics, has acted as a spokesperson for various groups that included Wikileaks and the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative. Her work for Wikileaks included an important role in the making of the Collateral Murder video. Jónsdóttir has announced that she had been notified by Twitter that it had been served by the United States Department of Justice with a subpoena demanding information about tweets and account details (including financial) on a significant number of twitter users for the period November 2009 to present. The motive for the subpoena appears to be directed at establishing an extradition case against Julian Assange.

Inspired by Talia Kayali and Moni Basu ow.ly/3Ibzw Image source ow.ly/3Ibz2